Monthly Archives: July 2018

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I grew up in a town of 700 where we left the car running in the parking lot and didn’t lock the doors to our houses.

These days, I live in the city and watch too much Criminal Minds and SVU.

Now I don’t open the door without checking who it is. I call 911 when anything seems fishy. I hurry to my car in a parking lot and immediately lock the doors. I am vigilant. When I take my favorite kiddos shopping, I barely blink, let alone take my eyes off them.

Sometimes I have nightmares, which means I need to shut off the TV.

But these episodes also give me hope. So many people are rescued at the last possible second. I have a better understanding of what “victim” means.

It’s been hard to blog because I can’t seem to think about anything else lately other than how crummy I feel. Even when I try to write about something else, something fun, it only reminds me that I have no energy for it. In some ways I am being reminded of the summer of … oh, 2006 maybe? When I had no energy. That was due to Luvox, an OCD med, and it was terrible-terrible-terrible, but it didn’t last forever.

I know that chronic means ongoing, but I am excited about all the different opportunities to work toward health. And I do not forget that miracles happen. I am in a weird season, I know, and I thank you for hanging in there with me.

My brother is getting married a week from today– it should be a lot of fun. I rented the most gorgeous dress, all navy blue and sequins, and I’ll be reading a poem I’ve written for the bride and groom. The writing conference a couple weekends ago was lovely and life-giving, so delicious to be in the presence of creative believers. I’ve been enjoying inspirational videos online too and wanted to share the one below with you. I’ll warn you that the music is a bit annoying, but the various speeches will give you so much strength!

I crawled into bed at 8:30 tonight, early for almost anyone, super early for a night owl like me.

I feel like I haven’t blogged much lately because I’m not sure how to do it without sounding whiny, and I hate that. I just imagine everyone is so damn sick of me saying how hard 2018 has been.

So then I try to write about something else entirely, but it just feels so fake, and I hate fakeness even more than whining. 🙂

Poetry almost feels like the most perfect language right now because you can obscure everything, stay passionate but obscure everything else. So I write poems.

Here I will attempt to be authentic without complaining. Just the facts.

I’m in survival mode. My house is a mess. I miss working on my novel and long to be reunited with the writer part of my identity, but I’m melting in the summer heat, which makes me feel like a bucket full of holes. My back has been spasming as if it were water on the boil. It leaves me full of knots that feel like cement, or like the stone “eggs” that work themselves out of Chan Dan Ya.

I’m lonely. After being dumb enough to let the same guy ghost me again, I dont have much energy around online dating, and even though I know that a romantic partner will not solve all the problems in the world, it does feel like it would be easier to be sick if I could just hold someone’s hand. I’m sad, but it has more to do with circumstances than straight-up depression, I think.

I guess the best summary of 2018 would be to say that I’m grieving a lot of things. Wow. It actually feels really good to be able to summarize it that way. I’m grieving.

Wow.

Okay.

Wow.

I’m grieving. Had to guide myself there, but I got there, and now I get to just grieve. That’s not whining. That’s real. It’s grief.

(I know this doesn’t seem like a huge breakthrough to everyone, but clearly it is for me, haha!)

Because I have compassion for those who grieve. So maybe I can find some for myself.

And so have I.
Not enough spoons for a week like this one.
Not enough for this month, this year.
This is our unit of measurement,
me,
J. Alfred,
or maybe Eliot himself,
the tired ones everywhere
who use the word chronic to describe
something unseen.

Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”

Let us go and make our visit.

See the muscles spasm
along both sides of the spine.
Feel the sweat drip
down the neck of a body that can’t cool.
The girl in the bed
can’t move
or think.
She is like the night.

When the evening is spread out against the sky

Like a patient etherized upon a table

Yes. Like that.

And I have known the arms already, known them all—

Arms that are braceleted and white and bare

And throbbing with pain
like a subwoofer
underneath the pale, freckled skin.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?

I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

Those were days of endless spoons.
I could throw them from me like candy in a parade.
I was younger and in love with
everything.
Now I watch
for any glint of metal,
any strobe of silver,
for my collection of spoons,
the currency of this girl
underwater.